Political Science

Since the mid-18th century, medicine has become a major economic and political concern for those who have governed London, and a profession with extraordinarily far-reaching authority in the management and even definition of human life. The very landscape of London has been framed as a source of sickness, temptation, and pollution.  This course explores the health landscapes of London in both Victorian and contemporary times. This course compares the landscapes of disease and (im)morality of Victorian London with contemporary London, accompanied by an examination of how the intervening world wars and establishment of the welfare state shaped the social and physical landscape of the city in relation to health. This course also includes out of the classroom activites allowing students to explore the history of health, disease, and medicine in four very different London landscapes.

This course examines the major issues of global urban planning and governance of Chinese global cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing with reference to New York, London, and Tokyo. It looks at the structure and institutions of urban government; efficiency/democracy/distribution/developmental goals; types of public policy; urban self-governance and its limits; inter-governmental conflict/competition/cooperation; privatization/partnership/governance grid; theories of pluralism/elitism; metropolitan government school/public choice theory/neo-regionalism/zonal restructuring; economic growth; industrial development; infrastructure; spatial planning; growth machines; urban limits; urban mechanisms; neo-Marxism; the historical institutional school; regulation; developmental state; citizenship and civic participation; neighborhoods and communities; urban social movements; social capital; gender and migration; and political parties and interest groups.

This course examines Australia's foreign and security policies since Federation, with a focus on contemporary issues such as defense planning and operations and engagement with the global economy. It explore Canberra's stance on terrorism, nuclear affairs, asylum seekers, and global environmental management.

This course utilizes an inter-disciplinary approach by using different analytical lenses when examining the intersections between different fields. The course begins with examination of key theoretical and ideological underpinnings related to natural resource management, synthesizing different academic fields beyond just economics and politics. This foundation is utilized to examine some of the most pressing contemporary global issues, with country and regional specific examples including from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

This course introduces the history of international relations, with an emphasis on the ways in which the Great Powers came to conceive, shape, and dominate the current ‘international system’. Although it follows a broad chronological trajectory, the course goes beyond traditional narratives and explanations of diplomatic relations by considering what French historians have come to refer to as ‘les forces profondes’ (or ‘deeper factors’) affecting international relations (IR), including economic, demographic, geopolitical and cultural factors that shaped the identity and foreign policies of nation-states. An important part of this process of identity formation--and of this course--revolves around the question of how national identities shaped (and were in turn shaped by) the relations of European states both with each other and with non-Europeans, especially Africa, East Asia, and the Pacific.  A central theme of this course is the idea that the Great Powers not only shape the ‘international system’ but are also shaped by it-- by their experiences of colonization. The course also addresses the critical assessment of historiographic sources (and of the question 'what is history'?); the use of theoretical IR tools to make sense of key international events, and the appraisal of the multiple ways in which variables such as actors, structures and processes contributed to shape the current ‘international system.’

Combining history with current affairs, this course examines the rise of the global drug regime and considers its present-day governance lessons. It covers how the anti-narcotics system was constructed in the 19th and 20th centuries through a specific historical process, beginning with the opium wars and culminating in a UN-centered global system; and with what consequences. The course evaluates various historical drug regimes, including the full tolerance once practiced in the United States and United Kingdom, the Asian opium monopolies, and the Portuguese decriminalization of possession. It considers contemporary challenges to prohibition, such as cartel violence, the opioid epidemic, marijuana legalization; and finally, paths for reform.

This course approaches crucial topics such as migration, conflict, and development from a gender perspective. The course explores gender as a framework for socio-political analysis; presents an overview of different theories and concepts relative to gender-differential impact in policies and practices in development, conflicts, and migration; identifies the relationship between gender and power, and between gender and the social order; analyzes how masculinities and femininities are constructed in times of peace, conflict, and war in access to resources, the implementation of development policies, and in migration policies; and assesses the implications of international policies and initiatives aimed at “mainstreaming gender” in peacekeeping, international development, and migration. The course includes interdisciplinary approaches (law, gender studies, anthropology, politics, economics) and analyzes international legal instruments, tools, and specific cases, as well as their implementation at the regional and national level. It also focuses on practical tools and experiences such as gender-sensitive project planning, use of legal instruments as advocacy tools, claiming women's rights in different areas of development (land, water, food security, food sovereignty, education, health), and migration and conflict studies.

This course examines basic philosophical and theoretical problems about law in constitutional democracies—its origins, its nature, its grounds for legitimacy, and its scope and force. The course introduces theories of law from the natural rights tradition, social contract theory, legal positivism, and legal realism. It concludes by examining theories of law influenced by interpretive theories (hermeneutics), by various schools of critical theory, including critical race theory and feminist theory, and by scholars working in law and society. The course examines several influential theorists and philosophers from the Western legal tradition, although it pays some attention to contemporary Korean legal theorists and philosophers. Students read important works by Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, H.L.A. Hart, John Rawls, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hannah Arendt, Brian Tamahana, Jurgen Habermas, Jeremy Waldron, Roberto Unger, Mari Matsuda, Derrick Bell, and Mark Tushnet. 

This course examines the concept of ideology and contemporary political ideologies. Topics include: origin and ideological justification of the modern state; ideologies of the enlightenment; conservative ideology; nationalism; socialist ideology; anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism; fascism and national socialism; science as ideology; new theories of liberal democracy.